This invention relates to the commercial processing of food products, and more particularly to the automatic cutting of fish fillets and other food products to predetermined portion weights or profile shapes.
Commercial production of fish fillets of predetermined portion weights heretofore has been afforded by the method and apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,019. This method and apparatus involves the intermittent scanning of fish fillets as they move along a conveyor to determine the weights of a plurality of longitudinally adjacent thin slices of each fillet and the number of such slices required to produce the desired portion weight, and then activating a cutter to move transversely across the conveyor to cut the fillet along lines which correspond to the number of slices in each fillet portion, to produce a plurality of portions of equal weight and volume.
Although the above described method and apparatus is satisfactory for limited commercial production, it is incapable of a production level necessary to keep up with present day food assembly and packaging operations. Further, it is incapable of producing fish fillets and other food products of predetermined profile shapes, such as are desirable in the packaging of sandwiches, frozen dinners and other foods.